Antoine Sevilla of San Julien

Born in Algeria, a Spaniard, moved to Paris when young. Poor in Paris in the 60s–odd jobs, an actor doing Shakespeare and comedy in a traveling troupe, and so forth. Marries the beautiful Genevieve, they have a son, Roman. A family man needs to make money; a talent for drawing and a building boom in Western Europe coincide: Antoine obtains an architectural license. Years go by. Somewhere Antoine becomes a "son of a bitch," leaves the family, roams. Reunited, the family moves from Paris to San Julien, village of 200 in The Auvergne.

Some time in his 60s Antoine begins to make paintings. He paints what he sees around San Julien–castles and trees, wheat fields, flowers, church towers, stonewalls, entry passages to the hundreds of villages that make up the Auvergne

I see his paintings everywhere I go when I'm here in the midst of France, in the homes I visit and the hills I walk; by taking responsibility to record what he sees around him, the countryside takes shape for me in his paintings and he becomes, painting-by-painting, the man I know.

And what kind of man is Antoine? The kind of man who never just lived through certain periods of his life like most of us, a man
who's living in the good and the bad of his life completely; a person who actually likes to smile and laugh at himself and call himself a son of a bitch. I admire the space Antoine fills, as I admire many of his paintings. Furthermore, I am grateful that Antoine has permitted me to reconstruct his life according to what I know and don't know about him, whether he knows he's given me permission or not.